James Lester
Since becoming the government go-between in charge of the ARC, career civil servant James Lester has come to realise that his team are fighting a dangerous battle - and he'll do anything to protect them. Bio Sir James Peregrine Lester is a Home Office official, ultimately responsible for the team of scientists charged with investigating the appearance of time anomalies. In the original timeline he was a rather distant administrator, who employed Claudia Brown as his liaison with the anomaly response team. However, in the altered timeline following Claudia's disappearance, he is the head of the new Anomaly Research Centre. Despite being married with three children, he never discusses his family – in fact he rarely admits he even has one. He only sees them at weekends, and has an apartment in London which he uses during the working week. Lester owns over 50 suits; all dark colours, all made to measure. He teams these with colourful ties. Someone told him once that that it was trendy – an image that he’s keen to promote. Episode 1.1 He's been given the task of uncovering the secrets of the anomalies and preventing mass panic. He’s the ideal man for the job. As far as he’s concerned the government knows best and the public has no right to know anything. He is arrogant, sarcastic and ruthless and makes no bones about his dislike of Nick Cutter (or anyone for that matter). He tends to regard the anomaly response team as "amateurs" but tolerates their lack of professionalism since, by his own admission, they are nevertheless very good at what they do. Claudia Brown first met him after she brought in Nick Cutter and Abby Maitland to sign official secrets act documents, stating he was in charge of the situation. He was suspicious of Cutter, and wondered if he was behind the Anomaly phenomenon, but accepted his theories. He had his own scientists perform tests on the prehistoric lizard-creature named Rex, and was disgusted as he flew around and secreted on his suit's shoulder. Once the tests on rex returned, he allowed Cutter to go through the Anomaly to try find his wife and to retun the creatures, but sent Captain Tom Ryan to accompany him. When Cutter returned, he was sympathetic of the loss of Cutter's wife Helen Cutter, and assumed the situation was at an end, but Cutter disagreed. Episode 1.2 Lester was growing sceptical of Cutter and his unorthodox methods, but when Claudia defended him and said he was their only expert, Lester agreed to keep him involved, but wondered whether Claudia had 'taken to' Cutter. When Cutter and Claudia wanted to shut down a section of the London Underground he refused to do so for all the chaos that would be caused with the trains, until Claudia pointed out there were other tunnels, so he organised a search. Episode 1.3 During a board meeting at the Home Office, Lester and Cutter somewhat argued over the anomalies and the seriousness of the situation. After a lifeguard was killed by a Mosasaur in a swimming pool, and the body later appeared at a reservoir, Lester thought it may have just been murder, but Cutter told him the body had been swallowed and then regungitated, thinking that the Anomaly had different points in the present, but the same location in the past. He didn't believe Cutter's idea of 'temporal faultlines' causing the Anomaly's disruption, claiming the situation was over, until the body of a diver lost at the reservoir turned up in a flooded basement where a plumber was killed by a creature. Shortly after, Claudia informed him of Helen Cutter's message for her husband, and so Lester went to the Anomaly site to organise a mission to retrieve her, but Cutter convinced him to let him go. When Cutter returned without her, Lester's soldiers went and got her themselves, and as Lester left, Cutter stared at Lester furiously, but he ignored him. Episode 1.4 When interogating Helen at the Home Office, she refused to cooperate with Lester, but told him that he looked like a Utahraptor she had once seen in the Jurassic, but Lester didn't react much. When Cutter managed to get information from Helen about an Anomaly that was set to open in the middle of London, he didn't believe she was telling the truth when she said she would have to take them to it, but felt the risk of doing nothing was too great. After Helen escaped and Dodos came through, Lester listened to the discovery of parasites inside a dead Dodo and was disgusted by the explaination of its life cycle. However, when a parasite infected a friend of Connor's, he demanded the team find him before it became a pandemic, and thought that the whole thing had been planned by Helen. Episode 1.6 Lester met with Claudia after she spoke to Cutter, and he desperately hoped that he would be able to do someting about the Anomalies before a major incident occured. he agreed to a meeting with Helen, who claimed to have vital information, after Claudia convinced him it could be worthwhile. Helen told the team that a predator from the future was loose, having come through an Anomaly from within the Permian Hills Anomaly, and Lester was worried becuase of the discovery of Future Anomalies. Once the Future Predator was killed and its offspring captured, he reluctantly agreed to use the babies to find the future anomaly in the Permian and then make sure other Predators wouldn't cause problems in the past. At the Anomaly Site, he asked Claudia if he should give a speech, but she ognored him and kissed Cutter, something he disapproved of as it wasn't professional. After Cutter returned and said that the mission was in tatters, he noted it was an awkward moment for Cutter, when Helen revealed an affair with Stephen years before. After she left, Cutter asked where Claudia was, but Lester didn't know who he was talking about, and neither did anyone else, leading Cutter to realise something had changed as the Anomaly began to close. Episode 2.1 In the new timeline, Lester runs the ARC where his team have moved to. He doesn't beieve Cutter's claims that the timeline is different after his return through the Permian Anomaly, thinking he is begining to loose his mind. His assistant, Oliver Leek, annoys him constantly by speaking out of term and questions the Minister's desicion to appoint a PR representative to assist in the operation, but warmed to the idea when Cutter informed him of Raptors in a shopping centre. he later introduces the PR, Jenny Lewis to the team. Episode 2.2 After he had introduced Jenny to the team, he was disapointed in Cutter's reaction, who was claiming that she was the Claudia they had worked with from the start. Cutter and Connor then announced their idea to create a detector for Anomalies, and agreed, without needing the prompting Leek had made. When Leek announced a possible Anomaly in a skyscraper, Lester was prepared to write it off as an ordinary fire until possible creature sightings were mentioned. Jenny kept in contact with him, but she had little to report. Episode 2.4 Following the discovery of a Future Shark, Lester assumed the creature had killed a missing teenager and theat the problem was solved, Cutter insisted something else was out there, because Cutter had heard something that sounded like singing in the canal and found no vocal cords in the shark, so he agreed to have the canal searched again. When Abby was taken by a creature, he had the distraught connor sent home and berrated Cutter for not sharing his theories, and had him fired before putting Stephen in charge. After Abby was rescued from the Mer Creatures in the future by Cutter and Connor, he reinstated Cutter after saying that he shouldn't have put Stephen in charge, and decided the Anomaly site should be sealed with concrete. Episode 2.5 After being told by Abby and Connor that Cutter and Stephen had been lost in the Silurian Desert whilst rescuing a girl, he reluctantly put the pair in charge of the operation, and stated that if the Anomaly reopened, they would attempt a rescue mission. Leek offered his sympathies, but Lester didn't accept them. After a new Anomaly opened to a prehisoric-themed amusement park, he approached the returned Cutter and Stephen, and said that given the choice between him and Connor, Cutter was the better man to lead the team. Episode 2.6 Lester was furious to learn that a Columbian Mammoth,(not that he cared about the exact species) was on the M25 in broad daylight, so the team departed quickly. When a Future Predator was smuggled into the ARC, Lester took up arms, alone because everyone else who was there was already dead and everyone else was absent, to combat the lethal creature, tearing into it's body with several rounds of an M249. Failing to kill the predator through firepower, he went on to free the mammoth from it's holding pen, which promply killed the creature via impaling. Angered by Oliver Leek's remarks and comments, Lester travelled personally to the building where Leek was supposedly hiding out. However, Leek once again had the upper hand, trumping Lester once more by leaving the remote used to control the future predator in a completely abandoned building. Attached was a note of mockery, which simply read: "Bad Luck". Furious, Lester shut off the body camera on one of his soldiers that was focused on him. Episode 2.7 Lester was angered by the disappearance of Cutter, Jenny, Connor and Abby, and demanded his assistant Loraine do something to find out Leek's plans. After Leek contacted the ARC and taunted Lester, a Giant Scorpion was released by Leek into a populated beach, so Lester convinced a reluctant Stephen (who assumed Lester was the traitor) to do something. After a virus Cutter and Connor had planted inside Leek's computer system sent the ARC information, Lester's people began clearing up his menagerie. Leek demanded Lester's men stay away from his base or he would have his controlled Future Predators kill Cutter, but Cutter freed them, and Lester watched as Leek was killed, before calmly telling Loraine to shut it off. He later appeared at Stephen's funeral, and when informed there was a new Anomaly, somewhat unsympathetically told the team to head off. Episode 3.1 "You'll be dealing with a highly strung and and temperamental team of rank amateurs who just happen to be brilliant at what they do. Your job's to stop them getting themselves killed...Oh, by the way, Professor Cutter won't like you, and he'll go out of his way to make your job as difficult as possible. Don't take it personally." Lester perfectly describes the team to Becker. In series three, Lester was faced with a career-threatening dilemma; fellow civil servent Christine Johnson was assigned to be the military liaison for the ARC. The two rivals met and spoke briefly at White Hall, before he was sent away. When the team returned to the ARC, Lester greeted the witness to the events, Sarah Page, and when she and Connor were talking, Cutter got an idea about creatures affecting mythological beasts, which might help in trying to predicting Anomalies. Lester agreed to hire Sarah, and when queeried about the Sun Cage in which the Anomaly was contained, Lester said that it was moving on. Episode 3.3 When checking on Cutter's prediction Matrix, the two briefly wondered about Helen, and then inspected Connor's work on a device to lock Anomalies, and was far-from-convinced by Connor that it would work. When the Nick Cutter Clone infiltrated the ARC, Lester assumed he was the real Cutter, and was baffled by his strange responses, and made a mental note to get psycological tests done for all staff. He spoke with Jenny about Cutter's unusual behavior when Helen and her Cleaner clones invaded. Lester demanded the Cutter Clone explain what was going on, only to get a gun pointed in his face. Although he briefly assumed that Cutter had betrayed them, Jenny and Sarah had both noticed how Helen was commanding the Clones, so they used archive footage from Helen's arrest to create a voice command that would get the clones to stand down. While Connor and Becker went to play the sound-byte on the ARC's speaker system, Lester was knocked out by a Cleaner Clone, and when he was rendered ut-of-action, Lester took revenge and knocked the clone out. after helen set off a bomb in the ARC, he evacuated with the others, and when Connor brought out the dead Nick Cutter, who had been fshot by Helen, he tried to get an ambulance for help, but it was too late.(Episode 3.3) Episode 3.4 Following Cutter's death, he appoints Jenny to take over the team until a replacement could be found. He seemed unsympathetic to Abby and Connor, but told Jenny it was better that they work because it would keep their minds focused. When the team returned from Christine's base where an Anomaly had been detected, he was extremely angry and contacted Christine and was assured (though far from convinced) that she had nothing that would threaten the anomaly operation, and he warned her that the ARC operation was his. Episode 3.5 When he first arrives at the ARC in the morning, he mocks Connor for keeping so many spare clothes in his office, unaware he was currently living in it. He was furious with Connor when he learnt one of his pet Diictodonts had chewed through a Anomaly Detector cable, and Christine Johnson chose that moment to come to the ARC for a tour. He did so reluctantly, and when she later asked if they knew where the Artifact was, he denied knowing. He took much pride in sending Christine away when one of her men had become infected with the fungus and died. Lester watched the attempts to stop the fungus from replicating inside the ARC, and Jenny and Danny's confrontation with the fungus creature. Afterwards, he appoints Danny to be the new team leader after Jenny decided to leave, and did so in front of Christine to spite her, as she had wanted her own bodyguard, Captain Wilder to take the position. At the end, Lester, who is displeased with Connor's breach of health and safety guidlines by living in the ARC, allows him to stay with him until he can find somehwere else. Episode 3.6 When he and Connor first arrived at the ARC, he kept Connor out of sight in his car as he didn't want people to know that he was sharing an apartment with him. When Danny and becker reported that they were sure there would be no more security issues, he berated Becker for allowing Danny to absail down the ventalation shaft. Danny soon realised there was an extra camera in the ARC, and found another in Lester's office. Knowing Christine was behind it, he tried to contact the Minster, only for his nemesis to arrive and take control of the ARC from him, though he said that it wasn't over. As he left, he nodded to one of the technicians, who sent Danny, Connor, Abby and Sarah the location of a safehouse he had decided to send them to. When they were captured, he returned to the ARC as he had been reinstated by the Minster, as Becker had recorded Christine insulting the Minister and passed it on to Lester, who in turn sent it to his superior. He pointed out that he'd been right when he'd said it wasn't over, and Christine assured him it wasn't. As she was escorted out, Abby said she thought Lester had returned because he cared about them, but Lester denied this and was then applauded by the ARC staff and seemed pleased that they preffered his leadership. Episode 3.8 Lester was preparing to head off to a dinner with the Chinese ambasador, and was learning to bluff his way in mandarin with a CD. Connor jokingly asked if he could go as his plus one, and when looking for his invitation, Connor said it was probably in his jacket pocket. He couldn't find it, and heard the Diictodon Nancy nearby, and found she had chewed off part his invitation and most of his jacket. Furious, he snarled at Connor, who had clearly tried to cover it up. When the team returned from the Future City Anomaly, Danny reported seeing Captain Wilder and a mysterious woman as they were leaving. Lester told Danny an Anomaly had been detected at Christine's Headquarters, but that she had insisted nothing was fine. Assuming she had access to an Anomaly and a cloaking device of some sort, Lester decided to meet with the Minster to discuss the situation, and told Danny to stay away. Episode 3.9 Lester called Danny as he was informing him he had a meeting with the Minister, and wanted to know where he was. Danny claimed to be stuck in traffic, and as he started to hang up, Lester asked him not to do anything that he would regret. Danny later rang to say he was bringing someone with him to meet him, and before Lester could inquire as to who, Christine arrived with an arrest warrent for Danny as he had broken into her facility. Danny tried to cover this up, and Lester looked out his office window and saw the mysterious woman Danny had talked about. As the woman took Christine at gunpoint, she suddenly changed into Helen Cutter. With Lester's men pointing guns at her and with her threatening to kill Christine, he reluctantly told his soldiers to stand down and for Connor to hand over the Artifact, as Lester couldn't allow Christine to be killed as it would go against health and safety. Series 4 Prequel Webisodes After the dissapearance of Connor, Abby and Danny, the ARC operation is suspended. Lester later is interrogated, he is made to give out their names. He is asked if he believes he they are still alive, he replies since they went into the future, they are technically still alive as even if they were killed in that world they would still be alive for another x number of centuries. He says that although the rescue attempts failed, the mission achieved it's goal as there is no sign of Helen, the questioner doesn't know who she is so Lester describes her simply as a "nasty woman". When asked if he feels that the ARC should be allowed to continue in the first place, he says that it was colossal mistake to suspend them in the first place, a decision that minster already has good cause to regret, noting the incident when a Stegosaurus appeared in the Members Bar at the House of Commons. Becker wants to resign as he believes Danny, Connor and Abby are dead, though Lester thinks they're still alive. Becker is told that Lester is needed, and Lester needs him. Lester is informed that the ARC will be allowed to carry out it's work, "in one form or another", Lester doesn't like the sound of that. (S4 Prequel Episode 1) As Jess Parker explains, the ARC is 50% privately owned and 50% goverment owned, Lester is still allowed to choose the staff, he chooses Matt Anderson as the new team leader, Lester is forced to keep both the Minister and Philip Burton satisfied. (S4 Prequel Episode 2) Lester bears witness to Matt's speech to the ARC personnel, where Matt states that hope is not lost for Danny, Connor and Abby and they aren't giving up on them, Lester gives him a pleased look when he finishes. (S4 Prequel Episode 4) Episode 4.1 Lester is still as dry and sarcastic as ever this series. He secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) begrudges dealing with Philip Burton, but for all his flaws, Lester is committed to the ARC. Beneath his sardonic exterior he cares about the people working for him, even if he rarely shows it. Lester and Matt Anderson haven’t had the easiest of relationships, but they bond over their growing distrust of Philip. Why did he really take the job of helping to run the ARC? When the Dracorex is accidently set free by Jess and ramgages through the ARC, Lester was elsewhere in the ARC, and unaware of the exact nature of the situation. He arrived to find the Dracorex roaring at him, but Matt managed to lure it to Lester's office, to his displeasure, with water and traps it in there. It trashes Lester's office before it is knocked out by tranquiliser darts and contained. He assumed Jess was responsible, but Matt took the blame. Philip Burton then arrived, saying that the Minister had agreed to add extra budget to the ARC operation, and Lester asked Jess to warn him if there was a meeting between the pair again, but she replied that she wasn't allowed to. Later when an Anomaly was being secured, Jess reported to Lester that Connor and Abby had come through the Anomaly from the Cretaceous, and though he asked about Danny, he didn't get an answer. He wasn't surprised that Connor had wanted to bring a pet back, and soon the team was dealing with a Spinosaurus in the streets. Lester, wanting the pair back at the ARC as soon as possible, attempted to get Jess to put Connor and Abby through to him after learning they had taken off after the dinosaur, but she didn't want him touching her equipment despite his threat to replace her. After the crisis was over, Lester greeted the pair, stiffly recirpricating Abby's hug, but not Connor's attempt. Philip arrived, and they went into Lester's office, where the pair were told that their jobs as field operatives were no longer nescesary as the job was now for military operatives, and though Connor begged Lester to reconsider, he told him that it had been his idea after their disappearance and Sarah's death, but he did offer them a place to stay until they could get themselves sorted. Episode 4.2 Connor and Abby arrived back to collect their things from their untouched lockers, and Lester offered Abby is a minor job looking after the creatures in the menagerie, but there was nothing that could be done for Connor, and asked him to keep a low profile for the time being. But after Connor went out on his own to investigate a creature at the docks, a Kaprosuchus that came through an Anomaly years before the detector was made, and helped kill it, and with Matt's prompting, he convinced Philip that as Connor and Abby had already been field team members before they disappeared, so the new policy didn't affect them. Connor, unaware of this, came back and demanded Lester for his job back, and Lester agreed without argument, but when when he asked for a raise as well, Lester told him not to push his luck. Episode 4.4 Philip later decided to have the creatures being contained put down due to the inconvenience and supposed cruelty of allowing them to live in a world they didn't understand, brought on by his experience. Lester didn't quite agree with Philip, claiming that what had happened included a certain human's error, but had no choice as such. Jess later came to Lester and told him of Abby's plan to take the creatures elsewhere to keep them from getting killed, and he told Abby to stop what she was doing, seeing as there was no way she could get them out and that he didn't want to have to call security in on her. Abby spoke of how they were being given the chance to see these creatures alive and that if they were killed it would not look too good on humanity. Lester decided not to co-sign an agreement with Philip, saying that if the public were ever to find out bout this, he certainly wouldn't be the scapegoat, essentially blackmailing Philip. He changed his mind, but told Lester he wouldn't forget about it. Abby was extremely grateful and hugged Lester again, this time leading him to say it would lead to others talking, and when she said that beneath his sarcastic exterior and was actually nice, he gave a light threat to involve his laywers about the slander. As he left, he told Abby that her overfed Mammoth had saved his life and that he would have thought it rude if he didn't return the favor. Episode 4.5 Matt and Abby told Lester about Emily Merchant, a Victorian era woman who had come through an Anomaly and had been staying with Matt before she disappeared. Lester wasn't happy that they had kept this from him, and said that despite what Becker said would be done with her, she would have only been temporarily contained until they could figure out what to do with her. Then an new Anomaly was detected, but the signal was fluctuating, preventing a location lock. Philip was intriguued and ordered the team to get down there, before remembering it was Lester's call. Despite being unhappy with Philip, he agreed to send the team down. Jess later showed Lester a security capture of Ethan kidnapping Emily, and when Philip managed to hone in on the Anomaly he ordered Abby and Connor to go after it, but Lester told them to go after the creature, but Philip convinced Connor to find the Anomaly. Lester told Jess to help Connor while he helped Matt locate Emily and Ethan, but only after asking for her help on a few simple computer problems. He sarcastically told Matt he was the new Jess when he began guiding a surprised Matt. He tracked a Black Box Emily had taken, and led Matt to the Tower Hill Cemetery, where Emily was rescued but Ethan escaped. Episode 4.6 Emily, Matt and Becker are in Lester's office, with Emily telling them about Ethan. Lester suggests she go finds her friends back on the other side of the Anomaly, but Matt insists she stays, even though Lester will have to go to the Minister and Philip. When Emily asks what will happen to her if that happens, Lester says that he doesn't know and won't be able to protect her from what they decide. Lester is asked to preform the marrage vows for Jenny Lewis and her fiance Michael at their wedding, and he does so via video link form the ARk, using the power invested by the Minister to make it official. Episode 4.7 to be added Appearances Canonical *Episode 1.1 *Episode 1.2 *Episode 1.3 *Episode 1.4 *Episode 1.6 *Episode 2.1 *Episode 2.2 *''Shadow of the Jaguar'' *''The Lost Island'' *Episode 2.4 *Episode 2.5 *Episode 2.6 *Episode 2.7 *''Extinction Event'' *''Primeval Evolved'' Intro *Episode 3.1 *Episode 3.3 *Episode 3.4 *Episode 3.5 *''Fire and Water'' *Episode 3.6 *Episode 3.8 *Episode 3.9 *''Primeval Evolved'' Week 9 *S4 Prequel Episode 1 *S4 Prequel Episode 2 *S4 Prequel Episode 3 *S4 Prequel Episode 4 *S4 Prequel Episode 5 *Episode 4.1 *Episode 4.2 *Episode 4.4 *Episode 4.5 *Episode 4.6 Non-Canonical *''A Rip in Time'' *''Dangerous Dimension'' *''The Lost Predator'' *''Fight for Survival'' Gallery :Also see: Category:Images of James Lester Lester, James Peregrine Lester, James Peregrine Lester, James Lester, James Lester James